Monday, June 13, 2011

So I have my DIY invitations good to go, but the envelope is woefully unadorned. What to do? You got it: put a bird on it. I have been learning that a cute collection of stamps is really useful for jazzing things up. They're especially useful if, like me, you have no fine motor skills.

The only drawback is it's a wee bit time consuming, but it's fairly rote so you can do it while watching TV or listening to KWAVE. I was cheap and only bought a tiny acrylic base for the fancy new stamps, so I had to do each one separately, even if it was in the same ink color. Moral of the story: you can save money or time.

Add a mailing label in a cute font & color plus a pretty stamp, and you are golden.

Friday, June 10, 2011

Recently I had the privilege of being asked to help throw a Baby Shower. Something I had never done before, but ignorance has never stopped me! (Even when it should) After considering my friend and talking with the main hostess, the theme was decided: Birds and Books, aka

Put a Bird On It.

First thing: invitations. As a person whose ambitions exceed my resources, I am always looking for ways to get what I want for less. It's tragic really. If the heavens poured gold on my lap, Gatsby would quail at my shindigs.

With a bit of advice from Mumsy, I swung an invitation that was completely unique/personalized and cost effective.

I had a few designs made for the Mommy to be. She picked this beauty. (I've edited some details, no 3am pizzas).

So I have the art, now what? The answer to many questions: Costco. I make sure the image is big enough and upload it to Costco's photo-invite department and have it printed like those Pic Christmas cards you get. And here is the result:

Bear in mind when you design stuff it usually prints darker. Another challenge is limited space, so to make things easy I created a blog post that worked as a "micro-site" where I could put more info. After a visit to tiny urls.com my massive link name is compact and invite ready.

So ta-da! Glossy printing and silver lined envelopes, courtesy of Costco. Now to make those bare envelopes nice...